mark zuckerberg talking about facebook"The Protester" may be Time's Person of the Year, but there's also something to be said for the Facebook resister. We all know at least one of 'em. They're that guy who was on the site for a few months, maybe even a year or so, and then quit cold turkey, citing a slew of popular reasons -- either that they felt the site made them "more alienated" from their REAL friends or that they think the site impinges on their privacy.

Sure, there are resisters who are quiet about it, who don't make a big to-do out of the fact that they're not one of the roughly 200 million users in the U.S. (or two-thirds of the population). But more often than not, they're the most vocal, gripey, holier-than-thou types who can't shut UP about Facebook and all of the "eeevil" it represents. (It's like, if you hate Facebook so much, why are you so obsessed with it?!)

The #1 Facebook resister who comes to mind for me is none other than my dear sweet significant other. He has never had a Facebook account and has no plans to open one. The other day, he joked, "Geeze, now I finally have to bite the bullet and sign up for Facebook!" "Why, babe?!" I asked, incredulous. "Because I have to update my status about how annoying it is when people are holding up the line, because they're updating their statuses ...!" Ha ha, how meta. He's a jokester, you see. But for the most part, he keeps his Facebook hatin' to a minimum. The thing is, oversharing just isn't his style ... actually, sharing anything online is not for him. (It's a wonder he ever signed up for the online dating site we met on in the first place!) But that's okay with me.

What's not okay are resisters who think they're above it and functioning on a higher plane or something than those of us who use the social network. It's fine if you choose not to use it, but those of us who do feel it serves a purpose in our lives. It helps us better connect with friends who are out of state or around the world. We love to pick up new info from our favorite companies or experts via their pages. We enjoy filling our friends in on our lives, and perhaps we write online content we wish to promote via share (ahem) ... or at least, we're reading engaging online content we wish to spread.

These are all legit reasons to be on Facebook. Sure, there are people out there who abuse their accounts, treating it as a virtual speakerphone for the minutiae of their daily lives, but that behavior isn't the central purpose of the site. It's just what resisters loathe about it. So let them remain non-members. But leave those of us who enjoy it out of it.

What do you think about Facebook resisters? Are you one?

 

Image via Andrew Feinberg/Flickr